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Tuesday, 1 December 2015

I have given a large number of interviews to media outlets in the past few weeks relating to President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, COP21: The 2015 Paris Climate Summit and recent Canadian climate policy developments and potential. Links and brief descriptions are below:Nov. 6, 2015 CTV News 'Obama says no to Keystone XL pipeline'680News 'Victory for the people: Environmentalists cheer Obama decision on Keystone'Interview in Vice: Environmentalists shouldn't take pipeline slowdown as a win for activismNov. 9, 2015 Global NewsBC1: Political strategist and commentator Alise Mills, and Simon Fraser University’s Mark Jaccard discuss the ramifications of U.S. President Barack Obama rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline from going ahead.

Thursday, 15 October 2015

“Policy academics are cheap dates.” One of my mentors,
professor Aiden Vining, loved saying that. His point was that we policy
academics will gladly pay for our own dinner if we think that a politician, of any political stripe, wants our
advice. This explains why, in my 30 years of climate policy research, I have willingly
advised Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Greens, sometimes when in power,
sometimes in opposition. Once, a politician actually paid for my dinner – at
McDonalds.

I have learned some things that are relevant to this federal
election. One lesson is that climate policy is really, really hard. Our
political system has strong incentives for politicians not to implement effective climate policies. To be effective, policies
must either price CO2 emissions or regulate CO2-causing fuels and technologies.
These compulsory policies impose short-term
costs (real and perceived) on some people, some of whom will wage war on the
guilty politician. As in all wars, truth is the first casualty: the climate
policy and its implementing politician will be blamed for completely unrelated
misfortunes by these people, powerful backers, and a media that loves attacking
politicians.

Saturday, 10 October 2015

Over the past three decades, governments in developed countries have made many
commitments to reduce a specific quantity or percentage of greenhouse gases by a specific
date, but often they have failed to implement effective climate policies that would achieve
their commitment. Fortunately, energy-economy analysts can determine well in advance of
the target date if a government is keeping its promise. In this 2015 climate policy report
card, I evaluate the Canadian government’s emission commitments and policy actions. I
find that in the nine years since its promise to reduce Canadian emissions 20% by 2020 and
65% by 2050, the Canadian government has implemented virtually no polices that would
materially reduce emissions. The 2020 target is now unachievable without great harm to
the Canadian economy. And this may also be the case for the 2050 target, this latter
requiring an almost complete transformation of the Canadian energy system in the
remaining 35 years after almost a decade of inaction.

Canadian Climate Policy Report Card: 2015BackgroundA critical challenge to preventing the harms from human-produced greenhouse gas emissions,
especially CO2 from burning fossil fuels, is that elected representatives face weak incentives to
implement effective climate policies and strong incentives to implement no or ineffective
policies. There are several reasons.

First, significant CO2 emissions reductions require ‘compulsory policies’ – regulation of
technologies and energy forms and/or pricing of CO2 emissions – and these are seen to cause
immediate costs for some even though the long-term benefits for society exceed these costs.
These immediate costs would begin during the mandate of current politicians, and have
significant political risks, while the benefits of avoiding climate change will mostly occur after
the career of current political leaders.

Increasingly, one hears our government has moved too slowly,
just as a prospector arriving too late to a gold rush. But this argument
reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of today’s natural gas market. It can
have potentially harmful repercussions for our economy and environment. Here is
why.

Saturday, 31 January 2015

It is amazingly difficult to get people to understand that if humanity acts seriously to reduce CO2 emissions, the price of oil would fall to very low levels - and stay there. In this op-ed in the Globe and Mail in December 2014, I explain the competitive drivers of oil prices, and why these prices have been really low for most of the past 100 years, even though human self-deception has most people thinking otherwise. In future op-eds and blogs I will present our research of the last two years on the path and level of the price of oil.

Oil Prices: A Lesson in Markets

Mark Jaccard

Globe and Mail, December 1, 2014

For 27 years in my graduate energy seminar, I’ve struggled
to convince bright master’s and PhD students that oil prices might actually
result from competition rather than a price-fixing conspiracy of oil companies
and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel. But this year, my
task was easier.

We start by reviewing several commodity prices – potash, lumber,
copper, oil – which show that the oil market is not atypical. We see that all
oil producers receive the same price, which is usually at or above the
production costs of the most expensive suppliers, such as Alberta’s oil sands
and North Dakota’s shale and tight oil. Low-cost producers, like Saudi Arabia,
get more profit from each barrel.